The TM-Sidhi®
Program: you become convinced that bumping on your butt is "the first stage of levitation"

At this point you are a pretty thoroughly "cooked"
frog. That is, you have internalized the TM dogmatic worldview. The TM dogmatic
reality has become your reality.
Regular periods of trance induction and dissociation have become a regular part of
your life. Not only that, but you have volunteered for extra post-trance dogmatic
indoctrination by attending meetings at the TM center, and you have read TM literature
and Mahesh's books at home. You have been to several week-end residence courses,
perhaps even to a week-long residence course at MUM.

You are fully invested in the principle that deep rest and the resulting release of
"deep-rooted stress" are the keys to happiness, and are eventually the keys to the
state of perfection that is Cosmic Consciousness. This is true not only for yourself
but also for all of mankind. Not only that, but these teachings are the only
keys to world peace, and TM is therefore the ultimate and only
hope for all mankind!

You're so well cooked that when you are told that you can be taught
to levitate, and to gain other supernormal powers, you believe it! You plop down
another several thousand dollars and sign up to learn the "sidhis."

What are the "Sidhis"?

In the nearest Western terminology, the
"siddhis" (that's the traditional spelling)
are "paranormal powers." The term and the concept is
a traditional component of "yoga" (taken in the broad sense rather
than just as stretching exercises).

Since "siddhi" is a common term in India it was not eligible for trademark, so
Mahesh changed to the spelling to "sidhi" and established "TM-Sidhi" ® as
one of his many trademarks. His "TM-Sidhi Program" consists of
techniques that are purportedly for the acquisition of these paranormal powers.
The most famous "sidhi" (I'll use his spelling) is the "flying
sidhi", also called "levitation" or "yogic flying."

The next stop in your fall down the rabbit hole beckons

By the time you have fallen this far down the TM rabbit hole you will know that
there are some TM teachers and meditators who meet daily in the TM center, as a group,
to do their "sidhi program" together. And by now you will have been indoctrinated
into Mahesh's dogma that groups of meditators and "sidhas" (meaning "those who
practice the sidhis") who perform their techniques together create a more "coherent
effect on the environment." Translated from TM-speak, this means that they have a
beneficent paranormal influence on everything in the universe, but especially
everything in their physical proximity.

So the next stage in your fall down the rabbit hole is to become a
"sidha." You sign up for the course. The teachers in your local TM
center decide that you are
"stable" and they endorse the application. ("Stable" means that you are
dogmatically pure and that you don't show obvious signs of psychological damage from
TM practice.) You hand over several thousand dollars and you're set to go.

Mahesh's course in miracles

The "sidhi course" starts by looking just like
your other residence courses. You do extra "rounds" and become pretty continuously
dissociated. Then, at one lecture they start your actual "sidhi" instruction by
planting a suggestion. The suggestion is that when you gently think a
certain very special thought called a "sutra" that you will have a "flavor of
experience." This "flavor of experience" will be in some way associated
with the paranormal power that supposedly results from using that sutra. Over a
number of sessions you are taught many such "sutras."

For example, when you gently think the words "Strength of an elephant" as
instructed while in trance or post-trance state after doing the standard TM technique,
then sure enough you have a "flavor of experience" having to do with
"strength" just as you were told you would. "It works!" you think.
(This sutra is supposed to eventually literally give you the strength of an
elephant.)

But all that really happened was that it was
suggested that you would have such an experience, so you did!
You wouldn't be here if you hadn't already demonstrated yourself to be vulnerable to
in-trance and post-trance suggestion. And there is so much rounding at a sidhi
training course that you are probably never out of a trance state at all!

At this point in your TM fall you will believe anything!

The "flying sutra" is the one you've really been looking forward to. You've been
hearing about this, after all, for quite some time, ever since you learned TM! It is
the very last sidhi you are taught, and it is a huge event. After learning the sutra
your entire class goes off, filled with anticipation, to a large room or hall.

The large room is covered literally wall to wall with foam-rubber mattresses. You
all sit cross-legged on them and meditate. At a signal you all stop meditating, and
then with eyes closed, and while in an in-trance dissociated state, you all gently
think the words of the flying sutra. The words are "Relationship of body and akasha,
lightness of cotton fiber."

The suggestion has already been strongly planted in you that
the expected thing to do is to hop forward. This is because you've been
hearing, perhaps for years now, that this constitutes the "first stage of levitation"
and it is therefore what you yourself will experience.

Soon one course member indeed hops forward. Then another. Then the someone hops
twice in a row. Yet another person hops forward. Some people don't hop, but most of
those will be twitching upward in place as though they are about to take off but
aren't quite making it.

Then it's like popcorn going off, with people hopping on their butts
up and down the room. You are experiencing the first stage of
levitation! (That video has whimsical music but it's an actual video of
TMers thinking that they are levitating!) It's an incredible rush. Once
again, Mahesh's teachings have been "validated in your own personal experience."

But, of course, you really haven't performed anything of the sort.
So what has really happened to you? All
you have done is to practice auto-suggestion during a trance
state. Your leg muscles push you up and forward in that way only in order to
fulfill the planted suggestion that the "flying sutra" will
produce "the first stage of yogic flying." You're not doing this
deliberately, you think that it is happening naturally. The popcorn
effect is because once the first person hops the suggestion is even
more strongly reinforced in the others that they can hop too.

And you have paid a lot of money for
this. Even worse, you think that you've received much more than your money's
worth!